I'd have liked to see them offer start/stop control over HDMI like the 701D, but I guess they figured they'd sell more of these if they priced them at the 70d level and offered 6 channels instead of 4.

But....6 channels in a small format for $299 that I assume can be easily powered with an external cell phone battery.

As for the 706, your AKGs (20 mV/Pa) will put out -8 dBu at 118 dBSPL. That's pretty loud, but definitely not out of the question for a rock concert. You would need to use attenuators to prevent overloading the inputs at that sort of volume level. You'd get an extra 20 dB using line-in, but if you're using a pre with fixed gain, or minimum gain, you would lose some or all of that again. Maybe you can use phantom in line mode, though (it is not clear to me from what I have read), which would help.

Talked to a guy at marantz professional today he said you could run line in with phantom on all inputs and that their preamps are a proprietary chipset. Had a brief conversation about preamps and all he could tell me were these are quieter and all around a better improvement to those of they previous handheld recorder line (661, 561, 671, etc)...it doesn't appear that they are running Ti chips or anything like that. Still projected end of Oct.

Wonder why we have heard nothing more about the Marantz PMD-706?? As at that sub $300 price it could replace the Tascam DR70D as the default choice in this price bracket. (and at the moment either the DR70D or F4 is my default recommendation for anyone starting out! Both pack in a tonne of value)

Although without TC it can never compete with the next step up (Zoom F series or Sound Devices MixPre series).

Wonder why we have heard nothing more about the Marantz PMD-706?? As at that sub $300 price it could replace the Tascam DR70D as the default choice in this price bracket. (and at the moment either the DR70D or F4 is my default recommendation for anyone starting out! Both pack in a tonne of value)

Although without TC it can never compete with the next step up (Zoom F series or Sound Devices MixPre series).

Says "End of October", but you always take those dates from B&H with a side order of a massive grain of salt! ha

there are two things I like with this over the 70d1 the xlr are matched, having 3 and 4 on different sides just bugs me2 line out and camera out, the 70d has a combo out and if you are doing video having both can be a plusI still like the 60d over both of these though for the reason that the outs have level adjustment knobs, these only have level adjustment knobs on the headphones out

Marantz may have had bad market timing releasing this after the 70d, the 701d, the Zoom F4/F8, Mixpre 3, 6 and 10T came to market. That's a lot of competition in the DSLR audio recording market.

PMD-706 can still carve out a solid niche for itself as the best sub $300 recorder, as currently DR70D holds that crown, but the PMD-706 would have 50% more XLR inputs than the DR70D.

Although yeah, the PMD-706 certainly would not sell as well as if the F4/MixPre6/etc didn't exist. But there are many people who even $300 would be stretching their budget, so a PMD-706 could be perfect for them!